It’s great in tea to help soothe an achy throat; it’s even good for the hair, but now researchers are suggesting that honey can also help fight serious skin infections.

When you have surgery or any kind of skin injury, otherwise harmless bacteria that live on the skin can infect the wound site. One type of strep is particularly common and can lead to stubborn wounds that refuse to heal, however researchers found that honey, in particular honey made from bees foraging on manuka flowers, stopped this strep in its tracks. In lab tests, just a bit of the honey killed off most bacterial cells and cut down dramatically on the biofilms they formed. The tests also found that the honey could be used to prevent wounds from becoming infected in the first place.

Right now the tests are headed to clinical trials and if the results from the honey are still positive this could be a huge deal in the medical field. You can read more about the study in the Microbiology journal article titled “Manuka Honey Inhibits the Development of Streptococcus pyogenes Biofilms and Causes Reduced Expression of Two Fibronectin Binding Proteins”.

It may take a while before we get the final results of the testing, so in the meantime check out this video from The Doctors on honey’s other healthy benefits.

around the web

One Comment

  1. should we be including it in our diets or just applying it directly to cuts and wounds?

Leave a Reply